‘King’ Author Reads Tonight
(From For the record, February 7, 1997:) An author reading by Seattle Times reporter O. Casey Corr will be held at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Auntie’s Bookstore. The wrong date was printed in Thursday’s IN Life section.
Considering how fair he was to the family he was writing about, you’d think that the Bullitts of Seattle would have been more cooperative with author O. Casey Corr.
Or cooperative period.
But Corr, a Seattle Times reporter and author of “KING: The Bullitts of Seattle and Their Communications Empire” was shut out by most of the family. And still he was fair to the Bullitts, whose lasting legacy is the broadcasting company that remains one of the dominant forces of the Seattle airwaves. Moreover, Corr, who will read from his book tonight at Auntie’s Bookstore, remains respectful of the family and all it has accomplished.
“Despite the efforts of some of the Bullitts not to help, which did make my life miserable at times, I very much admire the family,” he said during a phone interview on Tuesday. “I think they’ve been a powerful, powerful force for progressive change in Seattle.”
Corr, 41, is a Seattle native who was graduated from Seattle Prep before earning college degrees at Pomona College and Harvard’s graduate school. He worked on “KING” for three years, and much of that involved writing at night and on weekends while away from his day job at the Times, where he has worked since 1989.
The information he dug up came from the more than 100 interviews that he conducted with observers such as Ancil Payne, a former chief executive for KING Broadcasting.
So why does Corr think the family was so uncooperative?
“Basically, they wanted other people to tell the story,” he said. “They didn’t see me as Kitty Kelly, at least I don’t think so. But I was an independent guy whom they couldn’t control.”
And what has been their reaciton to the finished product they didn’t support?
“I’ve heard directly from some Bullitts that they very much enjoyed the book,” Corr said. , DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: READING O. Casey Corr will read from his book, “KING: The Bullitts of Seattle and Their Communications Empire,” at 7:30 tonight at Auntie’s Bookstore, Main and Washington.